News

Several hundred companies, governments, and civil society and non-governmental organizations have committed to zero deforestation initiatives. However, all may not have fully realized the enormousness and complexity of the challenge in committing to zero deforestation, and it appears that some did not know exactly what they stepped into. What is clear though, is that this endeavour is very much at the initial stage of development, and early work and experimentation is showing the way to putting in place what is needed.

Publications

The landscape approach has increasingly been promoted as a new perspective on addressing global challenges at a local level. In the face of increasing and competing claims to the land and the exhaustion of natural resources, planners, scientists and policymakers have come to realize the limitations of sectoral approaches. Integrated landscape level considerations have begun to supersede those restricted to, for instance, water, forests, farming and development programmes.

Given this interest, and the potential impacts of such initiatives, it is important to learn from the many practical experiences in applying integrated landscape management throughout the world. This issue of ETFRN News 56, ‘Towards productive landscapes’, brings together 29 papers by practitioners from all over the world who highlight the successes and challenges of applying landscape approaches.

Jointly, the articles explore:

the role of forests in mosaic landscapes;

governance arrangements at the landscape scale; and

key factors contributing to success in landscape management.

This ETFRN News explores how foresters, farmers, pastoralists and other land users have taken charge and jointly shape the landscape they inhabit. How the private sector finds ways to integrate supply chains into sustainable landscapes. And how this helps the global community to address the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss and food insecurity.

The articles highlight the contribution of increased social cohesion as a key benefit of landscape approaches. In many cases, it is catalyzed by an environmental problem serious enough to require negotiated solutions that create better outcomes for everyone. Stimulus and support from external actors in the form of compensation, co-investment and independent facilitation is usually needed to make this happen.

Although the authors quote many benefits of landscape approaches, a systematic framework against which to assess and evaluate the impacts of landscape approaches seems to be lacking. There is a need for people engaged in landscape approaches to put their experiences together, compare them and look for general patterns that explain why certain approaches work and others fail. A clear language is needed for understanding landscapes and landscape approaches to help monitoring and evaluating landscape efforts.

The great potential for synergies between FLEGT and REDD+ has yet to be achieved in practice. This is the conclusion of the ETFRN News “Linking FLEGT and REDD+ to Improve Forest Governance”. The publication presents 22 experiences and viewpoints from around the world about the linkages between FLEGT, REDD+ and other international forest management initiatives.

In recent years, FLEGT and REDD+ have emerged as the two most prominent international processes to conserve tropical forests. Avoiding overlap and duplication, and better still, creating synergies is important to make sure that these two promising initiatives achieve their ambitious goals. Increased cooperation between the initiatives at the national level could advance forest governance reforms, strengthen stakeholder engagement and balance competing interests, such as using forests for local development, generating revenue and income, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration.

FLEGT and REDD+ both aim to address the drivers of forest loss in tropical countries, although with different approaches and methods: FLEGT focuses on combating illegal logging and REDD+ aims to reduce deforestation and forest degradation and enhance carbon stocks. Both initiatives are relatively new and still evolving. They are expected to demonstrate their potential in the next few years and may well foster real change in the land-use sector. As FLEGT and REDD+ initiatives continue to develop and accumulate experience, it is vital to learn from this and share the lessons learned.

Also, interactions between FLEGT and REDD+ are starting to emerge. As described in the 22 articles in this ETFRN News, there is a great potential for synergies between various initiatives, but translating this potential into practice seems challenging. To maximize synergies between FLEGT and REDD+ good communication and continued collaboration between all stakeholders needs to be ensured. Better integration and coordination of the FLEGT and REDD+ processes into national forest policy planning as well as better consideration of the strengths and limitations of both processes can be a way to promote the establishment of effective linkages.

This issue of ETFRN News contributes to a better understanding of the existing and potential linkages between various forest initiatives, and of how synergies can be fostered to improve land use governance and promote more efficient implementation FLEGT and REDD+. This will benefit both the forests and the people who depend on them.

Private finance is currently the most significant source of investment for forestry. Estimated to total around US $ 15 billion per year in developing countries and countries in transition, private-sector investment in the forestry sector far outstrips the combined investments of governments and development agencies. Although broad sectoral investment parameters are generally well understood, the exact shape and weight of domestic and international flows remain to a large extent unclear. The United Nations Forum on Forests, among others, has called for better mapping of the forest finance landscape to create a clearer understanding of the types and potential impacts of complementary public and private investment on future forests. With growing needs for forest products, there is increasing agreement that there is a significant gap between the levels of financing which are available from both public and private sources and the funding required to meet expected future demands.

The private sector is well positioned to help fill this gap, and private flows are expected to continue to grow as investors explore new investment frontiers. The challenge for entrepreneurs will be to manage both the impact and long-term viability of their supply chains as competition over forest land for food, fibre and fuel production becomes increasingly critical. While the availability of private money is good news, particularly when official development assistance is coming under increasing pressure, there is also cause for concern. Private-sector interests are often misaligned with local and global public interests, and social and environmental concerns are sometimes far less important to investors than their primary interest in profitability. A crucial challenge for policymakers will be to somehow reorient, increase and incentivize private finance to make it flow in adequate amounts towards sustainable, environmentally sound, and competitive forest management practices that can support responsible and profitable forest entrepreneurship. Partnerships between public and private actors, various types of investors, communities and intermediaries can make a big difference by creating synergies that build on shared interests.

This issue of ETFRN News brings together 23 articles that present and analyze concrete examples of various private actors along the tropical forest-finance chain (small, medium and large forest entrepreneurs and intermediary and advisory organizations). The experience of these frontrunners presents a compelling case for revisiting business as usual. As policy-makers and private actors refine their strategy for seizing opportunities and managing the risks associated with emerging forest-related markets, these articles demonstrate that overall economic, social and environmental benefits can be reaped if investments are targeted correctly.

About us

Established in 1991, the European Tropical Forest Research Network (ETFRN) aims to ensure that European research contributes to conservation and sustainable use of forest and tree resources in tropical and subtropical countries. ETFRN promotes a dialogue between researchers, policy-makers and forest users, the increased coherence of European tropical forest research, and increased collaboration with researchers in developing countries.